Further promotion of overseas development, aiming at being a global but local company based in Tokushima

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

With the aim of “realizing a sustainable society”, our company is involved in natural energy power generation business. Although we are making efforts to contribute even just a little to controlling global warming, which is a common global issue, business development in Japan alone is becoming no longer sufficient. Therefore, we decided to pursue overseas development, and as a first round, we are moving ahead with projects to build photovoltaic power plants and bamboo biomass power plants in Indonesia. When we wanted to further accelerate advancement of the projects, we learned about this program. We decided to apply to promote overseas development and to create a global but local company based in Tokushima. I wanted employees to come to feel that overseas is not far away countries, rather it exists just before them.

After ascertaining the knowledge and skills of each intern, assigned each to activities matching their respective qualities

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

For the first two weeks we provided explanation about photovoltaic power generation and bamboo biomass power generation business. After that we had them submit reports, and were able to ascertain the level of understanding and knowledge of each intern. We believe that assigning them based on proper confirmation led to greater success of internship activities.
The intern from Malaysia was previously in charge of designing and drawing for electrical control system in factories, so leveraging her skill set, we asked her to convert a solar power plant electrical circuits diagram made by a European firm from European specifications to Japanese specifications. Pursuant to that she participated in meetings with the company in English, and she handled everything including components selection when converting to Japanese specifications.
For the intern from Indonesia, we asked her to collect information required for business in Indonesia, and to translate and summarize local specialized materials. Also, she checked our pamphlet in Indonesian made for use at exhibitions, and she amended expressions to be easier to understand by local people and to resonate in their minds.

Large involvement by advanced sciences background interns!
Project advancement speeded up further

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

Personnel who have specialized knowledge about power generation, are fluent in English and have local information are extremely valuable, so we were lucky to be able to accept these interns. Regarding entry into overseas markets, we had groped along a bit until now, but thanks to the intern from Indonesia coming, we were able to obtain local information quickly and accurately. Even for points we weren’t sure about, the intern checked quickly for us, and we could progress our business smoothly. At the same time, the intern from Malaysia accurately and quickly made the diagrams, and since she was fluent in English, collaboration with the European firm went extremely smoothly. Next spring we plan to have the 2 interns continue to be active in our company.
When I was first asked suddenly by the president “let’s apply to this program”, to be honest I was a bit taken aback. The reaction of my colleagues was not good either, and I was quite concerned. However, when the interns actually arrived, employees voluntarily made contact, gave assistance for problems, and were surprisingly cooperative. Accepting the interns provided stimulus, and rediscovering the attractive points of the company was an unexpected added benefit.